So what ever happened to Howie Day?  I had been following him since probably the fall of 2000, right about the same time as John Mayer started to gain a fan or two in the college scene.  Back then there was always the sort of unknown singer/songwriter trifecta of John Mayer, Howie Day and Matt Nathanson.  Clearly we all know where John Mayer is these days and he deserves the spotlight that he has.  Matt Nathanson struggled for a long long time being signed and dropped probably more than once, but he has finally felt a little bit of success with his new album (hear it at www.myspace.com/mattnathanson).  

Howie Day, who I’ll be honest, I thought was going to make it before John Mayer, finally got a deal in 2004 and released what I thought was a phenomenal album.  The first single, “Perfect Time Of Day” really captured Howie’s energy, but it failed to make a mark on the radio.  Then, the cheesy song from the record, “Collide” took off and catapulted the album to something like 800,000 sales.  And he has done nothing since then.

I happened to find a few videos from Howie’s second ever show in Los Angeles online and I thought I’d post two of them because it reminds me of the talent I had seen in him almost 9 years ago.  He recorded himself and looped it into something really amazing, plus his vocals were often struggling with a pain that came out through his facial expressions and tortured screaming of lyrics later in the songs.  I really loved this guy and I’m glad I had the chance to see him in his early days, playing Genghis Cohen and Highland Grounds in front of about 20 people, clearly a few years before selling close to a million albums.

Here is the first song from his set at Highland Grounds, playing “Sorry” with some typically dope looping towards the end.

And here is is singing a great version of “She Says” mixed with some U2 and some comments about a vinyl record cover that was on the wall that read “How Big Is God?”  He was obsessed with it the whole show.